


When I'm Small

by grimm



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: And runes, Gen, M/M, Sick/comfort fic, just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimm/pseuds/grimm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica looked a little uncomfortable, squirming before admitting, “I think Derek’s sick.”</p><p>Stiles raised an eyebrow. “You think?”</p><p>Li'l sick fic as a thank you to everyone following me!</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I'm Small

**Author's Note:**

> So I hit 200 followers on tumblr and 300 subscribers here a few days back and I wanted to write something as a thank you! Then someone sent a prompt asking for a sickness/comfort fic and it was just what I wanted, so here it is - my thanks to all of you! 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr @ [grimm-times](http://grimm-times.tumblr.com)! I post some writing there that I don't post here. ;O

Stiles shouldn't have been surprised that the knocking on the window wasn't Derek - Derek usually just came in without preamble and loomed menacingly until Stiles noticed him. He shouldn't have jumped a foot out of his chair at the noise. When he turned and saw Erica crouched outside, he made a face.

"Why can't any of you guys learn to use a door?" Stiles asked, sliding the window open. "Or do you all share some secret fear of ground floors?"

"Well, higher up _is_ safer," Erica pointed out, sitting down on Stiles' bed. "Vantage points and all that."

"Fair enough," Stiles sighed, sinking back into his computer desk, spinning back and forth in lazy half rotations. "What's up?"

Erica looked a little uncomfortable, squirming before admitting, "I think Derek's sick."

Stiles raised an eyebrow. "You think?"

"He shouts if anyone even goes upstairs," Erica told him. "He doesn't _smell_ right."

"I didn't think werewolves could get sick," Stiles replied, making a face and spinning around to face his laptop. He saw Erica shrug out of the corner of his eye; she knew even less about being a were than he did, and she _was_ one. No thanks to Derek and his eternally zipped lips, of course. "Let me see what I can find. Does he have any other symptoms?"

"Beside general irritability?" Erica asked, and she and Stiles shared a grin. "I don't know. Like I said, he won't let any of us see him."

"When did this start? Any run-ins with hunters, cursed objects, or magical creatures?" Stiles felt like Deaton. Oh god, was this his intended path? Doctor to werewolves? He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

"We maaaay have had a little brush with a naiad a couple nights ago," Erica admitted.

Stiles clicked his tongue. "And no one invited Stiles. Typical."

"Aww, don't sulk, you little baby," Erica snorted. "We didn't plan it."

"Fine, sure," Stiles sniffed. "I'll see what I can find, okay? I'll stop by the house later."

"Let yourself in," Erica replied, getting to her feet. "We're all spending the night at Boyd's."

"Sure," Stiles muttered as she disappeared out the window. "Don't invite me to your werewolf slumber parties either." Once Erica was gone, though, he picked up his phone and texted Derek.

_u ok sourwolf?_

_fuck you_ , came the almost instantaneous reply, followed shortly by _ericas goign to DIE_

Stiles clicked his tongue again. Spelling errors and bad grammar? Derek definitely wasn't feeling well. He liked to lord his grasp of the English language over them just as much as he liked lording over the fact that he was the alpha. Show-off. At least he was still making death threats – that was an encouraging sign of life.

Stiles sighed and set his phone down, turning all his attention to his computer. An hour later found him on the floor, books open in front of him, laptop humming beside his leg. He’d found several possibilities, along with their cures, which he scribbled down on a piece of paper so he could gather the correct herbs to make them. He had to also consider that this might be wolfsbane poisoning, so he gathered the kit Deaton had made up for him. Finally, notes and bag of herbs assembled, Stiles snuck past his dad’s room and took the Jeep to Derek’s house.

The house looked a lot better than it had when Stiles and Scott had first met Derek. He and the pack had been fixing it up and now it had a roof and exterior walls, even if the interior was still a little scorched. Stiles didn’t bother knocking on the new front door, which had been installed only a week ago and actually _locked_. He pulled out his key instead and let himself in. He headed up the stairs and almost as soon as his foot touched the landing there came a roar from Derek’s room that made the beams overhead tremble, sending clouds of dust rattling down the ceiling.

“Get _out!”_

Two years ago, the sound would have sent Stiles tripping over his own feet to get out of the house. Now, Stiles knew better. He knew Derek covered his fear and uncertainty with anger because he didn’t like to show weakness as an alpha. He also knew that he was one of the few people Derek could admit that to, though whether that admission came because Derek respected him or didn’t respect him at all was still something he was trying to figure out. So Stiles stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered down the hallway to Derek’s room.

In here, the inner walls and floor were still blackened with soot, but the outer walls were built from fresh wood. Derek didn’t have a proper bed, just a mattress on the floor with a nest of blankets pulled on top of it. He said he wasn’t going to buy any new furniture until the house was complete, but Stiles had a feeling Derek kind of liked the uncivilized nature of it, like it brought him closer to the wolf.

He paused in the doorway. Derek lay on his stomach, his nest of blankets pushed onto the floor. He wore nothing but boxer-briefs, his skin pale and shining with sweat. “Go away,” Derek muttered, his voice muffled by the pillow he had his face shoved into.

“Nuh uh,” Stiles replied, though he still hesitated before entering the room. He’d only been in a handful of times; he knew the space was like a sanctuary to Derek, a place where he could go that the others in the pack wouldn’t follow. Stiles was hesitant to break that invisible promise but he was concerned about Derek, and that concern pushed him past the doorframe. He sat down on the floor next to the mattress, setting his bag down beside him. “What’s wrong with you, dude?”

“Nothing,” Derek snapped, though there was a lot less vim in his voice than usual.

“I find that hard to believe,” Stiles replied. “It’s January and you’re sweating like you just went for a ten-mile run.”

“Maybe I did,” Derek mumbled.

“C’mon, sourwolf,” Stiles coaxed, leaning forward. “I can help you if you tell me what’s wrong. Is it wolfsbane?”

“No,” Derek admitted.

Stiles waited to see if he was going to say anything else, but the alpha didn’t speak again. Stiles sighed. “And? What else? How are you feeling?”

Derek flipped onto his side to glare at Stiles, his eyes red-rimmed, cheeks flushed. “I feel weak,” he said through gritted teeth. “I slept all through yesterday. I get hot, then cold. My _bones_ ache.”

Stiles snorted. “Sounds like you’ve got the flu, dude.”

Derek scowled heavily, brow shining with sweat. “I can’t get sick.”

“There are a lot of different kinds of magical illnesses,” Stiles replied, pulling his notes out of his bag. “Most of them are creature specific, but some can be transmitted from creature to creature. Like, say you went and fought a naiad without telling anyone—”

“We didn’t plan that,” Derek muttered.

“—without telling _me,”_ Stiles persevered. “If you touched it in any way, you could have gotten sick from it.”

Derek groaned. “I _may_ have ripped her throat out.”

“There you have it,” Stiles replied, a little crossly. “Magical flu. Now you get to feel how the rest of us feel at least once a year.”

“This feels like death,” Derek moaned.

“Buck up,” Stiles encouraged. “Lucky for you, I can whip up something to ease it a little.”

“I want it gone,” Derek snapped.

Stiles waggled a finger at him. “There’s no cure for the flu, dude. All I can do is make it better.”

“Fine,” Derek muttered, shutting his eyes. “Get to it, will you?” Stiles rolled his eyes and pulled handfuls of herbs from his bag, grinding them together in the little portable mortar and pestle Allison had given him for Christmas. He hummed as he worked until Derek swung out an arm, smacking him in the side of the face. “Shut up.”

“Someone’s grumpy,” Stiles replied, pouring eucalyptus oil into the mortar and giving it a stir with his finger. “Lay on your back; I’ve got to put this on your chest.”

Derek made a low, rumbling noise of irritation but rolled onto his back. Stiles moved onto the edge of his mattress and touched an oily finger to Derek’s skin. He felt like he was on fire, skin slick with sweat. Derek lay still, his eyes closed, hissing as Stiles drew runes on his chest with the herbal concoction, pausing occasionally to check his notes and make sure he was spelling them right. He had to pause more often than he liked; Derek was distracting like this, laid out with his dark eyelashes pressed against his cheeks. Stiles swallowed as he wrote out the last rune, just below Derek’s bellybutton. The runes flared with white light and Derek’s eyes shot open.

“You okay?” Stiles asked hurriedly, though the light from the marks on Derek’s chest was already fading.

“Just cold,” Derek mumbled, his eyes settling shut again.

There was no trace of the mixture left behind, just like what was supposed to happen. Stiles smiled slightly, proud of his work. “By the way,” he told Derek, climbing to his feet, “you’re going to hate me in a few minutes.”

Derek cracked an eye open. “What do you mean?”

Stiles shrugged evasively and went down into the rough kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets until he found a plastic bowl. Upstairs, Derek howled, “Stiles!” and he winced.

“I’m going to kill you,” Derek hissed as Stiles came back into the bedroom, bowl held before him like a peace offering. He was curled on his side in a fetal position, his entire body rigid with pain. He eyed the bowl, snapping out, “What’s that?”

“For when you puke,” Stiles said, setting it on the floor before settling himself back down on the edge of the mattress. “Sorry I didn’t tell you. Some people don’t like throwing up. My dad will do anything to avoid it when he’s sick.”

Derek groaned, then groaned again, pulling himself to the edge of the mattress to lean over the bowl, his shoulders heaving as he vomited up a thick black liquid – the result of the medicine fighting the magical illness. Stiles’ hand went out reflexively, rubbing the damp spot between Derek’s shoulder blades where his tattoo sat, a sad smile on his face as he thought of his mom doing the same to him as a kid. Derek spat into the bowl and shifted onto one elbow, turning to look at Stiles with his eyes slightly unfocused.

“You’re sad.”

“Just thinking about my mom,” Stiles replied quietly. “She always sat with me when I was sick.” And then she got sick and it was his turn to sit by her, day after day in the hospital, holding her hand as she withered away.

“I’ve never been sick,” Derek said, turning his head to throw up again. He coughed and asked, “What would she do?”

Stiles opened his mouth, then shut it. He kicked off his shoes instead, climbing over Derek to sit at the head of the bed. He tugged at Derek’s shoulders, pulling him to him so that his back was against Stiles’ chest. Stiles put his arms around Derek’s shoulders, one hand covering his heart. It was a testament to how sick Derek was, Stiles thought, that Derek let himself be manhandled like this. “She’d stay with me all day if she needed to. We’d watch a movie, or she’d read me a book, but she never left until I felt better.”

“Are you going to read me a book?” Derek asked, his voice vibrating against Stiles’ arm.

“I could.” Stiles lifted one hand, feeling Derek’s forehead, which was clammy and cold though his body still blazed with heat. “I’ve got a few memorized.”

Derek snorted, but it didn’t sound as rude as it usually did. “Okay,” he said, lifting his hands to curl his fingers over Stiles’ bicep. “Go on, then.”

Stiles closed his eyes and cleared his throat. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive—”

“You memorized Harry Potter?” Derek interrupted unbelievingly.

“You recognized the first sentence?” Stiles shot back. Derek jabbed his elbow into Stiles’ thigh. “You want a story or not?”

“Fine,” Derek muttered, relaxing against him.

Stiles grinned and started again. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much…”

He talked and talked, listening to Derek’s quiet breathing, feeling Derek’s grip on his arm slowly relax. He was pretty sure Derek was asleep by the time Hagrid took Harry to Gringotts and he himself nodded off in the middle of the wand selection at Olivander’s.

When Stiles woke sometime later, his neck hurt from sleeping up right and the light in the room had changed to the soft yellow of early morning. Derek had flipped onto his stomach, his arms curled around Stiles’ waist, head turned against his thigh. Stiles touched his forehead gently and he felt hot, but closer to normal than he had the previous night.

Derek made soft noise at his touch, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks though his eyes remained closed. “Thanks f’r stayin’,” he murmured against Stiles’ jeans.

Stiles smiled sleepily, running his fingers through Derek’s hair. “Any time, sourwolf.”


End file.
